IT'S common knowledge that with up to 70 per cent of all searches conducted through it's site, Google has grounded itself as the world's leading search engine.

The Google phenomenon has many business owners pondering how they can get their business to the top of its rankings - and capitalise on the meteoric rise of
the internet.

There are three main areas Google looks at when it makes a decision about where your website will appear in its listings:

Google's algorithm relies on the millions of links from one website to another to help determine which other sites offer content of value.

Google assesses the importance of every web page using its patented PageRank™ algorithm, analysing which sites have been 'voted' the best sources of information by other pages across the web by allocating each a rank from one to 10.

The higher your rank or 'link popularity', the more likely it is you will appear at the top of Google's search results.

However, the algorithm isn't as simple as placing the website with the highest number of links to it at the top of the rankings. Websites with fewer links can be rated higher when their links are from high-ranked websites with content of a similar nature to your website.

 Google has spiders that 'crawl' the internet reading your website copy, attempting to decipher what each page is talking about to evaluate the content of your website.

You can help in this process by ensuring you carefully choose the words - or more specifically, keywords - used within your copy. The placement of these keywords is also important.

Keywords in headings, meta tags, links (anchor text), title and bold tags are more important, because they typically describe what a page is talking about.

 It is important to remember the way you view a webpage is probably very different to the way Google is programmed to
read it. Unfortunately, having a site that focuses heavily on the two aforementioned areas is worthless if Google cannot read all the content in your website.

Therefore, you should create a text link to every page on your site - or have an .xml sitemap of your website's page structure readily accessible.

Additionally, your website should be constructed using the appropriate HTML coding to ensure Google can read all relevant content. For example, Google's crawlers cannot read text in images.

 Search engine optimisation is a complex subject. Visit the Website Standards Association's website to learn how to discover your company's current PageRank.

You can also find out what keywords are being Googled in your industry and what criteria to use to select a web developer who can ensure a Google friendly website.